The guard swung his war hammer again.

The chains rattled as Shan's body jerked and shuddered from the force of the blow. His scream echoed off the black stone walls. Pain is life, he reminded himself, silently reciting the litany he had taught his chadin at the Academy in Tehlas. Fey eat pain for breakfast. We jaff it on a cold night just to keep warm.

"Strip the flesh from his back," Maur ordered coldly. "Use the Fire whip. I don't want him bleeding to death, just close enough to it to make his mate eager to please me."

Shan's vision blurred as the guard circled around him, the Mage's favorite Fire-tipped whip clutched in his meaty hand.

The first blow seared him to his soul. He writhed as flesh ripped and scorched. He reeled as the shattered bones in his legs scraped and shredded his flesh from the inside out. Ah, gods have mercy. Maur just might break him this time.

«Shei'tan.» Elfeya's voice, warm as a summer sun on the shores of Tairen's Bay, washed over him. «I am here, beloved, I am with you. Together, we are strong.»

With an ease that would have driven Vadim Maur wild with rage had he known of it, Elfeya slipped into Shan's mind, circumventing all the dark weaves and sel'dor and black witchery the High Mage had employed to keep them isolated. She was there, with Shan as she had been since the day of their bonding, an inextricable part of his soul. His strength, his blessing, his greatest weakness. «Leave me, Elfeya. Shield yourself. I cannot bear for you to suffer.»

«Nei, never. I will not let him break us. You are Shannisorran v'En Celay, the greatest champion the Fading Lands has ever known. You are a warrior of the Fey, and I am your truemate, a shei'dalin of great power. This Mage may hold our bodies, but he has no command over our souls.»

The second whipstroke shredded the flesh off his back. He flung his head back and screamed himself hoarse.

«Shan! Stay with me. Focus on the sound of my voice, beloved.» When he didn't respond, her tone grew sharp as the Mage's whip. «Speak to me, Fey!» she barked. «Who are you?»

She'd spent too many years of their life together eavesdropping in his mind as he drove his chadins to the end of their strength, then commanded them to eke out more. She was such a fierce, brave blade in her own right, his equal in every way. And she was right: Fey did not surrender, not to fear, not to pain, not to despair. They fought until their hearts burst in their chests. «I am warrior,» he gasped. «I am Fey.»

«Kabei! And what is a warrior of the Fey? Tell me! Shout it out!»

The whip ripped a third stripe off his back, but this time his choked scream was not a mindless howl. This time it was a declaration of defiance ripped from his aching throat, each word a rasping challenge. "I am the steel no enemy can shatter." He thrust his chin out, met Maur's vile silver gaze, and snarled through gritted teeth, "I am the magic no dark power can defeat."

The High Mage smiled.

As the fourth lash fell, pain blinded him. He focused his mind on Elfeya's warmth and forced the cry from his burning lungs. "I am the rock upon which evil breaks like waves. I am Fey! Warrior of honor! Champion of Light!"

Shan sagged in his chains as the torment enveloped him in a hazy cloud of mind-numbing pain. He clung to consciousness and sanity by a thread, the words he'd just cried so defiantly repeating in his mind again and again, punctuated by the sound of Elfeya's quiet weeping.

An icy breath blew across his face, soft and taunting. "You will rot in darkness, Fey, while your mate serves my pleasure and your daughter surrenders her soul."

The mad sentience in Shan's soul roared with fury. Across the link that bound him to his child, her own beast screamed back in wild Rage. The next moment, a vast bolus of power blasted across the link, rushing into his broken body, searing him with a painful jolt. His beast seized the power, using it to feed his Rage. Shan's vision turned to black shadow lit with vengeful red sparks. "Not if I rip you limb from limb and feast on your bloody bones, Eld maggot." He lunged for the Mage, teeth bared as he cried, "Ve sha Desriel!"

He saw the war hammer swinging from the corner of his eye. The Mage cried, "Don't kill him, you idiot!" Pain smashed into his skull. Shan's body went limp as consciousness fled.

Sol clutched his daughter's body, rocking her as he had so many times in the past, singing the songs that had soothed her as a child. Blazing twenty-five-fold weaves of power formed a visible dome of magic around them. A five-fold weave had done almost nothing to ease her suffering, but the twenty-five-fold weave had at least dulled the pain enough that she was no longer screaming and convulsing.

Marissya didn't know how to heal her. The pain, whatever it was, was not coming from any wound to her body, and whenever Marissya tried to probe, Ellysetta's tairen roused with a vengeance, fierce and furious over any hint of shei'dalin intrusion into her mind. Rain, whom Ellysetta trusted, could not touch her without causing further pain. And Gaelen, who had suggested he spin the forbidden soul magic Azrahn to see what he could detect, had been unanimously shouted down.

Suddenly Ellysetta's spine went stiff again and her eyes flew open wide. "K'shareth na pearson sh'verre korbay!" she cried, her voice a ragged scrape of sound, hoarse and broken and several octaves lower than her normal tones. "K'shafair na selltemorra sh'verre dagorren! K'shadure a daynalle pear coda la cresses! K'shafay! Shaysan lowcha! Liesse chakai!" She shouted the last wild words, then collapsed in Sol's arms. Her head lolled back, and she began to mutter the same unintelligible phrases over and over again.